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"We looked with unspeakable horror on what must have been a part of Le Noir's hell."
Valerie, whom I have tried to hate—Valerie, who has lived in the past for the sake of a vanished love—came to me with a strange light upon her face.
"Is this your true self, Michael?" she asked, and there was something like awe in her voice. "I have never imagined anything finer or braver; you spoke out loud; you said you prayed that there might be in the universe places lovely and bright, which we would never see.
"Your prayer seemed to put a new heart in me; at the worst, last moment, there must be something better than despair. Suicide, Le Noir spoke of; the death that is accursed—but what if we die fighting, trying to escape? Even if there is not one chance in a million, that is not suicide. Michael! I have told you, and you have laughed at me, that I can hear Kerry—especially in times of crisis. He is dead, you always say and sneer; but I hear him—not his voice, exactly; his thought. Just now it was courage which I drew from you, that cleared my mind so that I felt his presence.